The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Recently, due to the quick growth of smart phone penetration, data traffic on a mobile network (e.g. general packet radio service (GPRS), enhanced data rates for global system for mobile (GSM) evolution (EDGE), and third generation (3G)) is experiencing explosive growth. In particular, more affordable service and application are expected by end users. Therefore, most of operators are facing the challenge to offload their overloaded networks and reduce the transport and peering cost. Under the situation, a content distribution network (CDN) as a potential approach for content delivery or acceleration is attracting more and more attention. A content distribution network may comprise a control node (CN) and at least one distribution node (DN). Data are available from the at least DN and are, for example, replicated in multiple DNs. Such data may be associated with a service requested by a user equipment (UE) associated with an end user. The principle of the CDN is that, at least one distribution node is selected by the control node of the CDN upon a request of the UE for a specific service (e.g., content), so as to provide the requested service to the UE. By replicating the content into the location as close as end users, the delivery performance (e.g., latency, packet loss) can be improved, and the transport and peering cost can be saved as well.
Accordingly, how to introduce a CDN system into a mobile network infrastructure makes more sense. However, when introducing the CDN system into a mobile network, e.g. one or more CDN DNs may be deployed in a packet data network (PDN) connected with a radio access network (RAN) or a PDN connected with a core network, there are many potential issues to be solved. One of them is how to set up an appropriate PDN connection and bearer over the PDN connection for a UE to access a CDN service to achieve the benefit of CDN and advantages of mobile networks.
Recently, to reduce transport cost and offload core network elements, in 3GPP TR 23.859 0.6.0 “Local IP access (LIPA) mobility and Selected IP Traffic Offload (SIPTO) at the local network”, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, there is a concept named as SIPTO/LIPA which focuses on the scenario that the UE requested content can be provided by local PDN. The principle of LIPA/SIPTO is that, for LIPA/SIPTO service, a specific APN is used by a UE to access related service subject to LIPA/SIPTO; and with the specific APN, a specific PDN connection is established between UE and Local PDN. However, to access a service subject to SIPTO/LIPA, the UE needs to provide a specific APN to set up a PDN connection to the local PDN network. Without the knowledge about the CDN DN(s) being selected by the CDN CN to serve the UE, it is difficult for the UE to figure out which APN should be used to access the CDN service to be provided by a specific CDN DN. An inappropriate APN used by the UE may result in unsuccessful access to the service subject to SIPTO/LIPA.
Generally, for facilitating a UE to access the mobile network, Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) Device Management (DM) may be employed. OMA DM is a protocol which may be used to configure and manage devices. As introduced in http://technical.openmobilealliance.org/technical/release_program/dm_v2_0.aspx, OMA DM may be used to configure operation specific information like access point name (APN) to UE to facilitate the network access. More details may be found in “Device Management Architecture,” Candidate Version 2.0, 31 May 2012. Generally, such configuration is static. In the case that a CDN DN, which provides CDN service to a UE, is out of service or is removed from a PDN associated with the configured APN, the UE will not be able to access the CDN service any more.
In view of the foregoing problems, it would be desirable to dynamically provide, to a UE, information associated with a CDN service requested by the UE, to improve the probability of successful access.